Hyacinths
by amberpire
Summary: Dave was always told to be a rock, but rocks sink. ;Dave/Sebastian;


_Hyacinths_

_;;_

So very few people have ever been gentle with Dave Karofsky, he's pretty much completely forgotten what it feels like. He's grown accustomed to sandpaper words and stiff punches in his shoulders to buck himself up, being violently throttled to the ground in a football game, but certainly not the careful fingertips of the nurses as they take his hand before leaving his room with smiles like petals, smooth and blooming. When he first arrived, he thought everyone was whispering on purpose in an attempt to somehow keep him out of the loop, but then he realized that this is just what people sound like normally. Dave is too used to yelling.

Held between his forefinger and thumb is a Styrofoam cup that squeaks against his lips as he presses it to his mouth, cold water splashing over the plane of his tongue and funneling down like a winter's wind through the desert of his body. Dave's head collides with the back of the pillow, holding the cup just below his chin as his eyes close. Kurt had visited the day before, but Dave can still smell him here – the boy was practically drenched in some kind of expensive cologne that clung to the chalky walls of his hospital room. He breathes the scent of Kurt, pretty, sing-song little Kurt, glowing with confidence and big dreams and love.

Dave's chest gives an uncomfortable twinge. His pupils shrink painfully against the white of the ceiling and walls when his eyes re-open, the hand holding the now empty cup just above his stomach.

Thinking about Kurt and his love – love he would never have, love he didn't deserve and couldn't fairly expect Kurt to even imagine giving to him – obviously made Dave feel like burrowing himself in a hole and never coming out. He meant it when he said that he wants to be friends with Kurt. At the moment, with all of his 'friends' currently filling his Facebook (which he plans to delete as soon as he's within reach of a computer) with their cruel words, and his parents still not fully understanding who their son is, and having sufficiently burned every other bridge he had ever built with anyone else, Kurt is all he has. He's the only thing tethering him here. And maybe if Dave hadn't been Kurt's bully, if Dave had been installed with the same kind of self-confidence Kurt did, if Dave's father hadn't once told him that 'all them faggots are better off good and shot', maybe he would be in Blaine's place.

Dave has tried to be mad at Blaine. Hate him, even. There are a dozen reasons to not like Blaine, other than he's gay, which was Dave's automatic rationalization: he's annoyingly optimistic, he thinks he can fix everyone and that he has all the answers, he's so _perfect_ that it's nauseating, and don't get Dave started on this freaky eyebrows. But it all came down to the fact that Blaine is happy, he makes Kurt happy, and they're deliriously in love with each other. Dave can't hate or be mad or even dislike Blaine because of the things he's done for Kurt, and, to Dave, Kurt is one of the few remaining good things in the world. As much as he would like to be the one to take Kurt's hand in the hallways, kiss him at night, touch him and whisper to him and feel the patter of Kurt's laugh in his ear and wrap his arms around and around his little frame, he knows that he really never had a chance, and he certainly doesn't have one now.

He tries not to torture himself too much with things like that – what-if's and all. They aren't going to do him any good where he is right now. What matters is this: Dave Karofsky was told to be a rock: tough, durable, stoic. Everyone else – women and gays and nerds and people like Artie, people who just weren't like him, not _normal_ – were weak flowers, delicate and therefore inferior in their vulnerability. But what Dave wasn't told is that flowers, as susceptible to danger as they are, are at least given the opportunity to soak in the brilliant yellow rays of the sun while rocks sink and sink until they hit the bottom.

He doesn't realize what he's doing until he looks down and finds that his Styrofoam cup has been turned into little more than tiny clumps. White beads stick to his gown with static, thick fingers running down the front of his chest to swipe them onto the floor. He reminds himself to apologize for the mess the next time one of his kind-spoken nurses comes in. At the sound of his door opening, he lifts his head to do just that, only for his sore throat to close in rapid silence, like the air was suddenly vacuumed from the room.

Two pairs of dark eyes lock from the yard or so that separates the bed from the door. The sounds of busy feet and the tell-tale beeps of pulses filter in from the hallway. Somewhere beyond the open door is someone filling the corridors with great, booming laughter.

Dave's unhinged jaw stiffens for a moment, throat collapsing with the effort it takes to suddenly form words – and even when he does find his tongue and remember what it's for, all that comes out is, "You."

The boy offers a cringe of a smile. He's tall, taller than Kurt and nearly as thin, and somehow the uniform makes those characteristics that much more emphasized. It's hard to believe it's the same boy Dave somehow got the guts to hit on at the club a few weeks ago; he looks so professional now, his shoulders taut and held back as if by some invisible string. Not to mention that the judgmental, skeptical look to his dark eyes has been replaced with something softer and kinder, more akin to the way Dave's nurses look at him. If Dave wasn't certain this guy didn't have a twin, he'd be well convinced that this boy couldn't possibly be the same person who shot him down with cruel, jagged words that dug through his flesh like barbed hooks. It had taken Dave nearly an hour to pluck up the courage required for addressing anyone, especially someone as cute as this guy, with his eyes that squint every time he smiles and his brunette hair finely tuned into a perfect wave. Where Dave is beefy and thick, this kid is all flat planes and small without looking fragile, unlike Kurt.

Straying away from the stranger's face, Dave only then realizes that the boy is cradling a bouquet of flowers – he doesn't know the first thing about flowers, but they're purple and small. His eyes shift quickly between the flowers and the boy's face, which is still stuck in a wince, as if it terribly pains him to be here.

Finally, Dave finds his mouth again, and this time he's able to manage more than a single word. "How did you – you don't even know my name."

A flicker of something like smugness, almost pride, crosses the boy's face. The expression much more resembles the one Dave has in his mind when he thinks back to that night at the club. "David Karofsky. I asked the bartender that night. To be perfectly honest with you –" He shifts, the proud front cracking away to reveal, once again, that uncomfortably pained look. "I wouldn't have bothered to remember it if, you know …" He gestures with the bouquet toward Dave on the bed. The sore ring around Dave's throat gives a pulse of a reminder. "And if you hadn't gone to McKinley …"

Dave doesn't understand. His eyebrows are hooked over his nose. "What?"

The boy shifts again, taking a slow step forward and propping the flowers up in his other elbow. "I'm a Warbler. I go to Dalton Academy. The McKinley Glee club were kind of my enemies up until a few days ago. That's how I heard about what happened to you." The boy chews on his lip, silence elapsing thickly between them. Then, he holds out his arms, the bouquet offered like a wrapped infant. "These are Hyacinths. I googled flowers that meant forgiveness and these came up."

Dave blinks, slow and unsure, before he tentatively takes the flowers out of the guy's hands. He watches as the stranger stands pin straight and he wonders, briefly, if Dalton is some kind of military place, though his thoughts are soon turned fully to the flowers in his arms. They're pretty as far as flowers go, and the smell is pleasant, though Dave has about as much experience with flowers as he does bunny rabbits and kittens.

"I am so sorry."

Dave lifts his head, surprised at how close to shoving his face full on into the flowers he had been. "Huh?"

"I'm sorry." The boy's eyebrows, thin and finely sculpted, give the tiniest flicker. "For what I said to you that night. I'm not exactly known for being kind." His grin is supposed to be joking, Dave is sure, but all it comes off as is sad, and regretful. "I'm trying to change that."

Half convinced this is some kind of elaborate illusion his mind has made up, Dave sets the bouquet on his chest and eyes the stranger in silence, as if expecting him to disappear. When several moments have passed and the boy still remains, Dave decides he's probably not hallucinating and asks, "What's your name?"

A confident grin washes over his face. "Sebastian Smythe." He gives a slight tip of his chin. "It's nice to meet you, David."

His lip trembles upward. "Dave," he corrects gently, looking down to the flowers again. "So … guilty conscious, I take it?"

"More like an epiphany." Sebastian motions toward the chair Kurt had sat in the day previous. With a nod of approval from Dave, the Warbler sits rigidly, hands smoothing down the front of his tie. "I'm an asshole," he begins, looking a bit too proud considering his word choice. "I've always known that. And I've accepted that about myself. When you're gay, growing up in a time and place like this, you've got two choices: be stepped on, or do the stepping. I did what I thought would be best for me and it's worked, for the most part. I never went through an identity crisis because I can out-insult everyone I come across. People are afraid of me." Pausing, he adds, "I may have met my match with that Santana girl from McKinley. She's got quite the mouth on her. Anyway," he waves a hand dismissively, "Yeah. I'm a bitch. A right dick, really, because that's how I've always protected myself. You know how it is."

Dave swallows. Thinks of the dozens of times he slammed Kurt into the lockers. Nods. Dips his nose into the flowers again.

Sebastian's chest deflates with a sigh. He uncurls his hands until they're flat in his lap and, staring at them, continues. "So, that night at the bar, those things I said to you … I didn't mean them. I don't mean half of the things I say to people. I just say it as a kind of pre-emptive strike, you know? Hurt them before they can hurt me. That's the way it's always been. That's my defense mechanism. But I didn't know that –" He chokes, his expression going from confident to torn so quickly, Dave would have missed it had he blinked. "I didn't know, I didn't realize that I was actually hurting people. And I'm not arrogant enough to say that you tried to – tried to take your own life solely because of me. I've talked to some of the Glee kids. I know it wasn't just that. But I certainly wasn't helping anything."

Sebastian looks up. His eyes are straining with his attempts not to cry, but Dave has long since given up that fight. A tear dangles from the edge of his chin before dropping into the flowers held against his chest.

"I don't know you, Dave. And last week, I didn't care to, because as far as I was concerned, guys who hit on me were just looking for one thing, and I had to make sure they knew I was the head bitch in charge." His huff of laughter has nothing to do with humor. "And I'm just so glad you're alive because from what I've heard – from Kurt and Blaine and the other McKinley kids – you're just a little lost, but you're nice." A smile gathers on one side of Sebastian's lips. "And I want to get to know you, now. I could use a little bit of nice, hey?"

Dave laughs, but it beats itself into a broken sob moments in. He closes his eyes, tries to hide his face in the flowers, and nearly jumps right out of the bed when smooth, warm fingers close over one of his own. Lifting his gaze, he is startled by the sudden closeness, and how prettier Sebastian is up close, when he's not being mean.

"You don't look like Liberace." Sebastian is dead serious, eyes narrowed slightly for emphasis. "So you're bigger than me. Whatever. It doesn't change the fact at all that you're hot. And I _mean_ that." His smile, this time, is more sly, almost sexy, and Dave is honestly impressed, given the circumstances.

But Dave is shaking his head, sliding his hand out from under Sebastian's to instead rub his palm over the base of his head. "I don't want pity, Sebastian." It's the first time he's ever spoken the guy's name and it feels strange on his tongue - strange, but not unpleasant. "I don't need any more people feeling sorry for me."

Sebastian hesitates, mouth parting with no words, and somehow Dave knows that being speechless isn't normal for someone like him. Sebastian is quick to regain himself. "I don't feel sorry for you. I'm not pitying you. God knows you have no reason at all to believe me, but I'm being honest. I want to be a better person. You want to be happy." Once Dave nods, Sebastian goes on, "I'm tired of being an asshole, and you -" He stops, the hand that had been holding Dave's once more seeking for it. Without looking down, Dave's hand crawls over his chest again until their fingers meet again. "You don't want to die, right?" Sebastian finishes, words uncertain, as if he's treading on thin ice and he doesn't know where the cracks are.

He looks to their joined hands. To the flowers. To Sebastian.

"I don't want to die," Dave says, and it's the first time he's meant it since he can remember.

Sebastian's smile is warm, like that sun the flowers get to bask in, and maybe Dave isn't a rock anymore.

_;;_


End file.
